The Wabash Factor

by Howard Fast

  I finished dressing, and I put the .22 pistol into my belt holster where I had carried my service revolver. Then I listened to the morning news and to all the speculation about my suspension. On Channel 4, there was a short interview with Porfetto, the first, as the interviewer pointed out, on national television. I suppose that there were ample reasons why Porfetto had decided to come out of the closet, and his support of the coming Los Angeles Olympic games had created an excellent moment. As near as I can recall, the interview went like this:

  Question: “Does the expansion and growth of the Hispanic population of the United States impel you to agree with those who say their education should be in Spanish?”

  Answer: “Absolutely not. They are not Hispanics. I dislike the word. They are Americans.”

  Score for Porfetto.

  Question: “And your interest in the Olympics, Mr. Porfetto. It is said that you have given more financial support to the Olympics than any other American. Do the Olympic Games occupy some special part of your heart?”

  Answer: “Absolutely. What a wonderful thing it would be if we could replace war between nations with athletic games! How many lives would be saved!”

  He looked benign as he offered this blessing. He was a handsome, well-tanned man with the look of a younger Ronald Reagan, except that unlike our President, he had allowed his hair to go gray over the temples. His voice was low and modulated. I felt a cold shiver come over me as I returned from the spell of the idiot box to the dismal reality of the tiny hotel room, and realized that this was the man I intended to kill a few hours from now.

  I went down to the hotel dining room for breakfast, a small place that was half dining room and half coffee shop, and Bill Hoffman came and sat down across the table from me, and he mentioned that Fran had left, half as a question, but intimating the need for some explanation. He had never asked for an explanation before, but now he said, “It’s just that she’s such a hell of a lady, and I know it’s none of my business, but I hope to God you haven’t broken up, because I know that can happen.”

  “Oh, no. No, Bill. I don’t think we’d ever break up. My kids are in Ireland. She went there to be with them for a few days. And by the way, neither of us will ever forget what you did for us.”

  “Nothing. My God, what did I do? I run a hotel and you came here. So I kept my mouth shut. I see the TV, like anybody else. But if I can’t trust a guy like you—I give up.”

  “Thanks. I’m checking out today, Bill. I’d like to leave my bag in your storage room until tomorrow, though. I’ll give you a check.”

  “No hurry.”

  “And one day soon, I’ll put it all together for you.”

  “I’d like that.”

  After I had paid up and written a check that approached the bottom line in our checkbook, I went back up to my room and wrote a letter to Fran:

  My darling wife, I want to say first that I never doubted your assertion that you came from the blood of kings, or as Sean used to put it, in the old days, from a long line of poets and singers. Truly, I never recovered from the fact that you were willing to spend your life with me, and I saw no other woman as long as I could be with you. Well, that’s how I began it, and I had written those couple of sentences when I realized I had fallen prey to the Irish compulsion to make something like this a barroom deathbed statement. It rubbed off, and when the emotion reached a certain height, there you were up on the walls of Tara. Not being Irish, I tried again and wrote: My darling Fran. I did the only thing I knew how to do. I love you with all my heart and soul. And don’t be too hard on me when you explain it to the kids. That was better, and it laid on her a proper degree of Jewish guilt.

  I gave the letter to Bill Hoffman, telling him that unless I happened to become dead in the next few days, he was to tear it to shreds after forty-eight hours. If I died, he was to hand it to Fran. But in all truth, I had no intention of dying.

  It was a nice day outside. It was a nice day to live. I walked uptown to the library at 42nd and Fifth, where life on the wide steps is a better harbinger of spring than any weather service. There were two black men playing on iron bowl instruments and there was a mime imitating Mayor Koch, and there were three ballet dancers in froufrou costumes dancing on their toes without music. There were also three artists willing to do a charcoal-drawing portrait for five dollars, and I watched them for a while. They were very good indeed.

  Then, right there, I ran into Swifty Goldberg, who is just about the finest pickpocket in all the five boroughs. Swifty is a small, elegant man, fastidious in his dress and manner, with the kind of poise and assurance that will admit him almost anywhere. He never works crowds and he would scorn to lift anything in a crowded subway where poor working people are packed in like sardines. His specialty is the convention, and he does very well except on those occasions when he is busted. Now he, like myself, was enjoying the spring air, and his convivial greeting must have been due to the fact that now I was a civilian.

  “Nevertheless,” Swifty said, “my heart goes out to you.”

  I thanked him and asked him how it was that at the edge of noon, when he should have been working any one of the half-dozen conventions in town, he could take the time to lounge around here on the steps of the New York Public Library and take in the entertainment as well as the spring air.

  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

  “True. But I had always imagined your work to be in the high-class area.”

  “True enough, Lieutenant. But I have antenna. You have to have antennas to survive in this jungle, and it’s nervous time. The word is out.”

  “About what?”

  “Ah-hah! That’s just it. Something very large is coming down, a very big fuzz operation, and when that happens, all the fuzz get spooked and they can grab you and bust your ass for no reason at all. My word, Lieutenant, if it hadn’t been for all your grief—I mean if you were still a gainfully employed cop—I would not be talking to you, because you might bust me for no reason at all. You ever hear of that dry desert wind they got out on the Coast? They call it the Santa Ana, and when it blows everyone gets as jumpy as a dog in heat. Well, it’s blowing here now, and I’d just as soon have a few quiet days.”

  I got very impatient at that point, and I asked what the devil he was talking about and how did he know?

  “It’s in the air.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit about something being in the air. What’s up?”

  “I don’t know what’s up. All I know is that it’s in the air. If you had antennas, you’d feel it. Cops don’t have antenna—and I’m not trying to offend you, Lieutenant. They’ll give you back your badge some day, and then you’ll be on my ass. So I’d just like to have it cool between us. Okay?”

  “Okay, Swifty.”

  He drifted away, and I wandered around the corner and into Bryant Park, where the coke dealers scattered like pigeons. Why I look like a cop, I don’t know, but it’s there.

  But I was no longer in that line of work, so I drifted slowly over to Seventh Avenue and uptown, and it was lunchtime when I arrived at the Seventh Avenue Delicatessen. Since Fran had gone, I had become indifferent as to whether I was followed or not, and the Seventh Avenue Delicatessen was no place for me to seek for nonrecognition. Max Cronich, the top sandwich man, had served his apprenticeship at the old Sixth Avenue Delicatessen in the legendary days of corned beef and pastrami, and when that eatery beyond peer had closed down, he brought the art of sandwich making to the Madison Avenue Delicatessen, and from there he went to Seventh Avenue. As disciples follow a prophet, so did a great many of us follow Max, and today I went to the counter and ordered personally, instead of allowing a waiter to convey my desire secondhand. To a degree, I thought of it as the condemned man’s last supper.

  “I want hot pastrami,” I told Max. “Don’t cut off the fat. I want it fat and delicious.”

  “You got it, Lieutenant,” Max said, “but they’re all talking about a nice fat sl
ice of pastrami like it’s a death wish.”

  “So I got a death wish.”

  “I been reading. What did you do?”

  “No politics. Thin rye and give me some extra pickles.”

  I took it to a table and ordered a bottle of beer. A large, overweight Italian, whom I remembered seeing around and who was in the bookmaking business, came over to my table and introduced himself as Loui Abentzi. “I’m Joey Finelli’s cousin, he should rest in peace, only he never had anything much to do with me because he seemed to think I wasn’t honest. I don’t hold that against him. Can I sit down?”

  “Sure.”

  He eased his huge bulk into the chair and said, “He was a cop, and he was sore as hell there was a bum like me in the family. But now he’s gone and we all try to help poor Paula, and she tells me that according to Joey, you’re the best. All right, they bumped you, but I got something to pass on. There’s a councilman I won’t name who’s close to the boys down at Police Plaza, and someone else I can’t name hears him say they got to get rid of that pain in the ass Golding and that they should send him to Bermuda for a vacation or something.”

  “Someone with no name says something to someone with no name—who told you to come to me with that kind of bullshit?”

  “Nobody tells me. I didn’t even know you’d be here.”

  “Who told you to peddle that crap to me?”

  Abentzi stood up. “I try to do you a favor—well, fuck you.” He said it softly but intensely, and then he turned around and walked out, and I realized that he was absolutely right and that no one could have known that I would be there, and I had behaved like a horse’s ass.

  I sat and looked at a beautiful hot pastrami sandwich that I could not touch. My appetite fled. The very thought of food disgusted me, and my last supper was a washout. I paid the check and bought an oversize chocolate bar, which I munched as I drifted along the street. It was twenty minutes to two. A day can be as long as an eternity if you have to spend it on the streets, and at this moment, there was no place I could light without some complication that might end my existence—or at least my purpose for the day. Moving east, I paused at the Plaza Hotel, where I made use of the men’s room. I’m not an urgent drinker, but it would have done my heart good to sit down in the bar and dream my way through a couple of bottles of good Pilsen beer. I didn’t dare. When I used the gun in my pocket, it would have to be used with precision, and even a drop of liquor doesn’t help that.

  From the Plaza, I walked to Third Avenue, where I remembered that Fran and I had been trying to find a free evening to see Terms of Endearment, the film everyone was talking about at the moment, and which, according to our friends, promised a good cry. I decided that Fran would have to see it herself, and it killed the next two hours very nicely, even if I didn’t cry. I suppose I had more important things to cry about. When I got out of the theater, I crossed Third Avenue and spent the next forty-five minutes or so in Bloomingdale’s. I did a dumb, sentimental thing, and I didn’t realize how dumb and sentimental it was until after it happened. Fran had been talking about needing a new purse, so I bought her one, putting it on my charge card, and having it sent to our apartment. And then I thought about the purse being delivered, and myself in jail or dead, and I had to walk back the length of the store to cancel the sale.

  I decided that it was time to start downtown and get on with what I intended to do, but when I got to the Waldorf, it was still only six o’clock, and according to information in the lobby, the dinner which would honor Mr. Porfetto was scheduled for seven-thirty.

  I bought a copy of the late edition of the New York Post and took myself down to the Waldorf coffee shop on the Lexington Avenue side. I discovered that I was hungry, having eaten almost nothing all day; and I ordered a club sandwich and coffee, thinking regretfully of the bottle of beer I had left untouched at the Seventh Avenue Delicatessen and the two bottles unpurchased at the Plaza. According to the New York Post, an active search was being conducted for Lieutenant Harry Golding, who had apparently disappeared the previous day. The last word from him was an incoherent telephone call to the district attorney’s office, and as of today it was not known whether he was a victim of foul play or had disappeared rather than face the charges that had led to his suspension. It made interesting reading, especially as the Post went on to describe the curious and absolutely unexplained disappearance of Golding’s wife and son and daughter. They concluded that it added up to one of the most interesting mysteries of the season, and they wondered whether it connected in any way with the murder of Lieutenant Joseph Finelli, who was known to be an old associate and good friend of Lieutenant Golding.

  It was also a lesson in the likelihood of finding a person who did not choose to be found—in a place like New York City. They printed a photograph of me, but that hadn’t helped during this day when I was drifting homeless around the city.

  Six forty-five. I paid my check and walked over to 50th Street and turned left toward Park Avenue. The motor entrance to the Waldorf is on 50th Street, between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, and since Park Avenue buildings built over the train yards have no proper basements, the motor entrance was on a level with the street. It was just possible that Porfetto had already arrived, but not likely. These affairs had a sort of built-in formality, and if the time called for was seven-thirty, Porfetto would arrive a few minutes before or after that time, most likely after. I took up a position across the street. There was a broad walk beside the auto passage, about ten feet between the curb where the cars drew up and the doors leading into the hotel, and it was very well lit, allowing me to see clearly what took place.

  At five minutes after seven, Toomey drove into the auto entrance. He was still driving my car, and with him were Keene, Hennesy, and Bolansky. They were met by another man who was probably one of the hotel security staff, and for a few minutes they huddled and talked. The security man made some motions toward doors, and then he shook hands with Toomey and left, going back into the hotel. Then Toomey spoke to the bell captain, who appeared to be in charge of the arrivals and departures. It was well past checkout time, so there was a very small parade of incoming and outgoing guests. This business of loading and unloading taxicabs took place beyond where the four detectives had stationed themselves.

  It was twenty-minutes after seven when a stretch limousine Mercedes, one of those incredibly long, pale gray cars, came east on 50th and turned slowly into the car entrance. As it turned, I spotted a Wabash sticker, a small silver thing on the rear bumper, and I was across the street at the same moment that the Mercedes came to a stop.

  What happened now happened more quickly than I can tell it, and it happened in what you might call a lump of incident which I must take apart and spell out. The Mercedes came to a stop as I entered the motor arcade. The near set of doors to the hotel elevators were up a step, which I took, placing myself a bit higher than the others and giving me a clear target. A man opened the front near door of the Mercedes and stepped around to open the back door, and I recognized him as the man who had chased me down that street where the kids’ school had saved my life, the man with the cannon-like automatic, and as it turned out, the man who’d killed Finelli. The four detectives were watching the car. The man from the front seat opened the door of the car and Porfetto stepped out. A woman came out of the hotel entrance, moving past me and trailing a fragrance somehow familiar, and at that moment my gun was in my hand. But the woman blocked my shot by moving directly to Porfetto, exclaiming, “Alfred, how wonderful to see you!” The thug who had shot at me on the school street moved to block her way, but she was too quick for him. She darted past Toomey and embraced Porfetto with her left hand. He tried to pull away, but she was a tall, powerful woman, and she was firing a gun into his stomach simultaneously with her clutch. Toomey dived to grab her and Porfetto’s man pulled out the huge automatic that he had used on me. Toomey would have caught the shot that was intended to kill the woman, but even as his gun came ou
t, I flung a shot in the only place where it might be effective, into his hand which held the gun. He let out a roar of pain and I fired again, a shot that, as it turned out, smashed three bones in his wrist. As I told Fran afterward, it was the kind of shooting people write poems about, but no poems were written for me. And then Keene and Bolansky had him, and Hennesy was hanging on to the woman, and Toomey was shouting to the bell captain to get an ambulance.

  From the moment Porfetto stepped out of the Mercedes to the moment he slid to the ground with two bullets in his heart and a third in his spine and his hired gun whimpering over a shattered hand and wrist, no more than a few seconds had elapsed, and at the end of those few seconds two people saw and recognized me, face-to-face. One was Toomey and the other was Deborah Alan, the woman who had just killed Porfetto, and lying on the ground, next to Toomey’s foot, was the gun she had used and which he had not yet picked up. It was the .22-caliber purse gun, which I had bought for Fran. Too many things were happening at once, and after that brief glance and flicker of recognition, Toomey was shouting at the bell captain, and in that moment, I took three steps, picked up the purse gun, turned and walked out of the motor entrance. No one stopped me. It was still less than thirty seconds since it began. But everyone else was drawn to the dead man and the wounded man, whose shattered wrist was pouring blood. Their attention was totally focused at the heart of the drama, at the tall, beautiful woman who had committed the crime. No one noticed me as I picked up the purse gun or as I left.

  Chapter 16

  I WALKED EAST, toward the river. Two police cars raced by me as I walked. A very decent response, a matter of minutes. We were a very good police force, but if a man wants to kill someone, it’s almost impossible to stop him, and I would guess that with a woman, it’s even closer to impossible. And with Fran’s gun. The last time I saw the little pistol, she was putting it in her purse. How did Deborah Alan come by it?